The Deadliest Poison
by demonicnargles
Summary: A story about how Naruto copies the style of jyuuken, to great effect. Only, his version is much more deadly, thanks to Kyuubi. But no one will tell him, and so when he finally finds out… Dark. One-shot.


The Deadliest Poison

A story about how Naruto copies the style of jyuuken, to great effect. Only, his version is much more deadly, thanks to Kyuubi. But no one will tell him, and so when he finally finds out… Dark. One-shot.

* * *

Naruto growled as he stood up through the pain. His entire body ached after Neji's last attack. Stupid jyuuken, sealing off his chakra.

But then Naruto smiled. Just _his_ chakra. He formed as simple seal to help him concentrate and began to draw power from the seal.

Neji scoffed, thinking that Naruto was futilely trying to draw up his own chakra. "I've sealed it off, Naruto. You won't be able to use chakra for at least a few hours. Give up. It was not your fate to win this fight."

Naruto just grinned and pulled a little harder. _Pop, pop, popopopopopopop_. Kyuubi's chakra forced its way out of the sealed tenketsu, quickly wrapping the blonde in a thin red mist before it faded out of sight.

Naruto smirked and dropped into his normal fighting stance, one that he had made on his own so long ago, when he figured out that the Academy instructors were not helping him at all.

Neji frowned. It should _not_ have been possible to unseal chakra so quickly. How on earth had Naruto done so, and what was this strange red chakra?

The Hyuuga prodigy fell into his jyuuken stance, gathered his chakra, and attacked again. _This _time, it would be 128 palms, and then Naruto would be finished.

As Neji rocketed forward, Naruto had a sudden idea. Why not try a little Jyuuken himself? Of course, he didn't have the skill to see tenketsu, so he'd just be guessing… Naruto decided it didn't matter. With Kyuubi's seemingly infinite chakra at his disposal, he could just make up for his lack of skill with pure power.

Neji almost tripped when he saw Naruto change into a fairly good imitation of the jyuuken stance. What was that idiot thinking, mocking the Hyuuga like that?

But as Neji approached, he realized that Naruto truly intended to fight like that. He saw the strange red chakra gathering in the blonde's hands, ready to strike. Man, that was a lot of chakra.

But Neji had speed and skill. He deftly dodged Naruto's first clumsy attempt at jyuuken and tap a tenketsu on the idiot's chest. _Pop_. Almost instantly it unsealed itself in a flicker of red chakra.

Neji was confused for just a moment, but that moment was long enough for Naruto to strike. Imitating Neji's last attack, Naruto struck Neji in about the same place the white-eyed boy had hit him. Naruto had no idea if he had gotten a tenketsu, but just to be safe, he shoved a huge amount of chakra into the attack.

Neji flew back several dozen feet, and landed in a heap, clutching his chest. If the Hyuuga had been the kind to curse, the air would have been filled with obscenities. As it was, he merely curled into the fetal position, and pulled his head back. His mouth stretched open in a silent scream.

Pain. So much pain. Even though the attack had missed the tenketsu by a good quarter-inch, which, in normal jyuuken, was a complete whiff, Naruto had pushed so much chakra into the attack that it didn't matter. Much of it had gotten to the tenketsu anyway, sealing it in some new, incredibly painful manner.

And it only got worse. Instead of fading away as the shock wore off, the agony intensified, as if the chakra were burning him from inside. Steeling himself against the pain, Neji stood up and took his jyuuken stance again, shaking slightly.

The white-eyed boy rushed forward, now much more careful to avoid getting hit. He hit several tenketsu in less than a second, easily avoiding Naruto's slow reactive attacks. But the tenketsu wouldn't stay closed. By the time that Neji had gotten to 32 strikes, every tenketsu he'd hit in the 16-set and before was already open again. The same with 64, and with 128.

By the time Neji leapt away, winded after the exertion, and wincing at the continually growing pain, all of Naruto's tenketsu were completely open, as if nothing had happened.

Naruto sprang forward to attack, looking like a slower, blonde version of Neji. The Hyuuga dodged and dodged, growing slower because of the pain, even as Naruto sped up as he really got into it. Red chakra flew past the white-eyed boy with every failed attack.

Neji couldn't dodge one blow, so he blocked it with a hand. Just a slight tap to divert the blow, but Neji's hand was instantly engulfed in screaming agony. Perhaps because it was so small, compared to the amount of chakra in Naruto's strike, it grew worse at an accelerated rate. The pain quickly became unbearable, so Neji blocked off feeling in that hand with a quick jyuuken strike to his own wrist.

But that couldn't keep him from noticing that his hand slowly paled, became gray, and then began to turn black. The darkness began to seep down his arm, causing pain all along the forearm. The skin there turned deathly pale, and began to fade to gray.

But Neji had no time to prevent the pain in his arm. He was too busy dodging the furious flurry of attack that the blonde now unleashed. As his arm worsened, he realized that he could no longer move it with precision. The pain in his chest was now a constant, excruciating torment. His breaths became labored as his chest tightened involuntarily.

Neji turned to the side, putting his bad arm behind him, since he could no longer move I adequately enough to avoid getting hit. Neji coughed, tasting blood, and feeling it leak from his mouth and nose. What was going on? He could vaguely see the chakra inside him moving, as if with its own will, but he had no time to ponder it.

Naruto got another hit in, tapping Neji's stomach. The Hyuuga doubled over in tortured agony, passing out before he hit the ground.

The announcer declared Naruto the winner, and medics removed Neji from the field.

No one wanted to inform Naruto that Neji died minutes later, and so the blonde continued on, oblivious.

* * *

Naruto howled in frustration as he jumped in with his clones, trying desperately to defeat Gaara, and so release Sakura-chan. But each time he got close, the sentient sand would brush him away like a fly.

Growing angrier by the second, Naruto began to use more and more of Kyuubi's chakra. But even with his enhanced speed and strength, he couldn't get past the sand, which hovered around Gaara like an overprotective mother.

As he became more focused, Naruto lashed out with little bursts of Kyuubi's chakra. With just a few attack, Naruto became aware of how the sand fell away harmlessly once it was touched with the demon's chakra.

Mouth stretched in a feral grin, Naruto charged in one more time, without clones. When he was within the sand's striking distance, he unleashed Kyuubi's chakra in a thin film around himself. The sand that had moved to defend fell away as it came into contact with the red energy.

Now in melee range, Naruto delivered a single, jyuuken-style punch straight to Gaara's face. The opposing jinkuurichi flew backwards, hitting a tree.

Naruto could only watch in fascinated horror and Gaara's face twitched and writhed and then fell off, revealing the true face underneath. Black splotches twisted and writhed around the red-haired boy's face, in conflict with some internal source of energy.

Not one to pass up an opportunity like this, Naruto once again sprang to attack. He grabbed the boy's head with both hands and _pushed_, releasing a continuous flood of red chakra.

Gaara' screamed, a horrifying shriek that was laced with, or echoed by, a long, shrill scream. Black began to dominate his skin. Blood flowed from his ears, his mouth, and his nose. Crimson tears ran from his eyes.

Finally, the insomniac boy fell into unconsciousness, and so Naruto dropped him to the ground, assuming that some ninja would take him back to the hospital later.

He never found out that he was wrong, that the ninja who later came across the scene took the body straight to the morgue.

* * *

When Naruto faced Kakazu, he was still unaware of his deadly power. He was never assigned to clean up after a mission, and he never had to take an enemy back for interrogation.

No one had the heart to tell him that the demon's chakra was a deadly poison, that even the slightest drop was a certain death sentence, if a slow one.

So when Naruto failed to defeat Kakazu, no one dared to tell him that he had already won. The moment that he had attacked with Kyuubi's chakra, and landed a solid hit, injecting the chakra into Kakazu's system, he was victorious. And so no one knew what to say to Naruto's when they later found Kakazu's body lying in the woods, surrounded by death poems etched onto the surrounding trees. The supposedly immortal Kakazu could not escape the inevitable doom that had arrived with Kyuubi's chakra. With all of his hearts within him, the chakra had spread, killing them all one by one.

Instead of adding to his life, they had merely prolong his suffering. But no one told Naruto, who only heard that Kakazu had been killed by someone else in some other place.

* * *

And when Naruto faced Itachi later, on his way to the Akatsuki base, he never knew why the missing-nin became so calm during the fight. He never knew that once he had hit the traitor Uchiha, just once, that he had spelled out his certain death.

Itachi survived for months, taking special medicines and undergoing various experimental procedures, so that he was able to survive, just barely, until he faced Sasuke in his last battle at the old Uchiha hideout.

Naruto never knew, and Sasuke never found out, that Naruto was the true killer of Itachi.

* * *

And no one was surprised when Naruto as moved to ANBU at a rather early age. Even if Naruto didn't know why, he was a spectacular asset in combat. As long as hit the enemy, even once, with just a bit of demonic energy, he won.

And because of the Hokage's orders, no one was allowed to tell him. Tsunade couldn't bear for her beloved surrogate grandson to bear the weight of his own accidental atrocities.

On her orders, no one told Naruto why several of his fellow ANBU died of minor injuries on their missions with him. Naruto didn't know that he had hit them, and no one was allowed to tell him.

* * *

Naruto sighed as he sank into the chair in his office. Being Hokage was good. Clones took care of all the paperwork, not even needing replacement, since they lasted until they were hit or dispelled.

Naruto watched them work, as he slouched in the rather comfortable chair. The worst part of being Hokage was not even an issue. Despite all of Tsunade's problems with it, and all of the old man's complaints about it, Naruto wondered why neither of them had ever tried shadow clones.

After the first few weeks, the clones even had their own personalities, separate from Naruto. They developed a rather dry sense of humor, and had their own motivations.

Things continued as normal until one of them managed to annoy Sakura one time to many, and she happily smacked them into the nearby walls.

Naruto, unaware of this, suddenly opened his mouth in a silent scream as the memories of the clones returned to him. Many, many memories of dull paperwork, but that wasn't the problem.

The problem was the file that they had seen, and that they had never told Naruto about, for fear of this very reaction.

The file that detailed Naruto's ability to bring certain death to any enemy.

The file that detailed the horrific suffering of the victims of Kyuubi's poison.

The file that _listed_ the victims of Naruto's deadly poison.

The most lethal infection in all the world, a killer without any cure. The most cursed sickness ever inflicted on another human being. And it was all Naruto's fault. All his doing. Even if unwittingly, he had killed and killed killed.

Not many people understood why Naruto had committed suicide, shoving an exploding kunai into his own skull. Only a few knew what the writing on the walls of Naruto's office, penned in the blonde's own blood, truly meant.

All around the office, the walls bore a message written in red. The name of the file. The reason for his sudden suicide.

"The deadliest poison."

* * *

Wow. That turned out darker than I really planned it to be. Um… yeah. I know it's not incredible, but please let me know what you thought of it.

-demonicnargles


End file.
